Rhetorical Analysis Of Self Reliance

Essays are a medium of writing often chosen to make ideas that are new, or controversial, or even just more complex, know to an educated audience. Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American author and transcendentalist wrote a collection of essays, one of which was one of his most famous titled, Self-Reliance. Self-Reliance is an essay full of metaphors, parenthetical, cumulative and various other types of syntax structures, as well as personification. All these qualities are consistent through Emerson’s piece, but examples and analysis will be conducted on his first three paragraphs within this essay.
Several different metaphors exist in this small sample, but the one that most effectively shows their maximum effect within this sample is where Emerson declares, “there is a time […] every man […] arrives at the …show more content…
He uses simple, compound, complex, periodic, cumulative and different combinations of these to make his point in a thorough and educated manner. His most useful sentence structure is periodic sentence structure. An example of this, key to the overall argument of Emerson’s essay is when he admonishes his readers- “trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string” (Emerson 3). His most critical, and overarching theme is revealed and easily recognized in these two words, written to stand apart: “Trust thyself.” Another example of this periodic sentence structure, coupled with parallel structure is when Emerson argues, “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men- that is genius” (Emerson 1). Emerson’s claim that trusting yourself and being dependent on your own personal intelligence brings greatness is again demonstrated clearly, and in a way that is effective to draw the reader’s attention to the very heart of what is truly crucial to take away from this